One of the key features which was required for Emitter.ca, was the ability to geocode search terms like street addresses, cities, and postal codes, that a user enters so that Emitter.ca could easily return facilities that are nearby. To do this, we leveraged Bing Maps's API for performing the Geocode lookup. Microsoft offers a variety of APIs for allowing your application to interact with Bing Maps, however, for Geocoding search terms, we utilized Bing's SOAP API.

He shares the class he uses to pull the information out of the Bing Maps SOAP response and push the details into the properties of a class. The simpel class made interfacing with the API an easy task and allowed for string-based lookups on just about anywhere (like "Toronto, Ontario").

Developer.com is continuing their series (on the Google Maps API, see here for a previous article) today with this new tutorial, a look at using the geocaching functionality the Google Maps API offers over a HTTP connection.

In this tutorial I showed you how to submit geocoding requests via JavaScript, which is convenient because it's easy to subsequently build a map using the retrieved coordinates. However, if you're interested in performing bulk geocoding for reason of storing a series of coordinates in a database, you might be interested in taking advantage of a second means for geocoding, accomplished by way of HTTP request.

Storing the coordinates locally will not only decrease the number of required daily geocoding requests (limited to 50,000 daily), but it will speed your application by cutting down on the total requests required to ultimately build a map.

They start off with a simple example, showing how to sed the request out to Google as well as the output. They show how to get the information you need out of the return XML. This basic example leads to something more complex - the server-side caching of the geocode results in a MySQL database.

Developer.com is continuing their series (on the Google Maps API, see here for a previous article) today with this new tutorial, a look at using the geocaching functionality the Google Maps API offers over a HTTP connection.

In this tutorial I showed you how to submit geocoding requests via JavaScript, which is convenient because it's easy to subsequently build a map using the retrieved coordinates. However, if you're interested in performing bulk geocoding for reason of storing a series of coordinates in a database, you might be interested in taking advantage of a second means for geocoding, accomplished by way of HTTP request.

Storing the coordinates locally will not only decrease the number of required daily geocoding requests (limited to 50,000 daily), but it will speed your application by cutting down on the total requests required to ultimately build a map.

They start off with a simple example, showing how to sed the request out to Google as well as the output. They show how to get the information you need out of the return XML. This basic example leads to something more complex - the server-side caching of the geocode results in a MySQL database.

The OC Food Review blog has posted part one of a two part series covering the creation of a location-based search engine. They're currently implementing it into their site and wanted to share the knowledge.

Conceptually, location based searching is pretty straight-forward: find out where you are, find out how far you're willing to travel, and compare your location against the locations of all your choices. If the distance between where you are and what you're interested in is less than what you're willing to travel, add it to your results list. Simple, right? Right.

He talks more about the concepts behind the search and one of the keys to the entire process - geocoding. They opted to go with the Yahoo! Maps API to grab this information. There's some sample REST urls and the output of the results after they've been unserialized.

They've even created their own class to make things even simpler. It does require that you have cURL installed with your PHP5 installation, but outside of that, there are no other dependencies.

The OC Food Review blog has posted part one of a two part series covering the creation of a location-based search engine. They're currently implementing it into their site and wanted to share the knowledge.

Conceptually, location based searching is pretty straight-forward: find out where you are, find out how far you're willing to travel, and compare your location against the locations of all your choices. If the distance between where you are and what you're interested in is less than what you're willing to travel, add it to your results list. Simple, right? Right.

He talks more about the concepts behind the search and one of the keys to the entire process - geocoding. They opted to go with the Yahoo! Maps API to grab this information. There's some sample REST urls and the output of the results after they've been unserialized.

They've even created their own class to make things even simpler. It does require that you have cURL installed with your PHP5 installation, but outside of that, there are no other dependencies.

On the Spindrop.us blog, there's an interesting post with details on combining the popular PHP framework, symfony, and the Yahoo! Maps system to create maps from a GeoRSS feed.

While building out the reviewsby.us map, I decided to use the Yahoo! Maps API versus the Google Maps API because I wanted to gain some familiarity with another API.

It was worth trying Yahoo!'s API. First of all, reviewsby.us has addresses for restaurants and Yahoo! provides a simple Geocoding REST service. This made it easy for me to convert street addresses to latitude and longitude pairs (even though this wasn't required as we'll soon see). The real selling point of Yahoo! was the GeoRSS functionality. I can extend an RSS feed (which symfony generates quite easily) to add latitude or longitude points (or even the street address), direct my Yahoo! map to the feed and voila, all the locations in that feed are now on the map, and when I click on them, the RSS item is displayed. That cut down on a lot of development time.

He gives an example of a GeoRSS file, including a little bit on changing a normal RSS feed into a GeoRSS one. He then creates a model in symfony to contain the GeoRSS data and a few helpful classes to make parsing out the GeoRSS data quick and easy. He also briefly mentions the creation of a GeoRSS feed with symfony, basically changing an option on creation and using a different (provided) class to format things correctly.

On the Spindrop.us blog, there's an interesting post with details on combining the popular PHP framework, symfony, and the Yahoo! Maps system to create maps from a GeoRSS feed.

While building out the reviewsby.us map, I decided to use the Yahoo! Maps API versus the Google Maps API because I wanted to gain some familiarity with another API.

It was worth trying Yahoo!'s API. First of all, reviewsby.us has addresses for restaurants and Yahoo! provides a simple Geocoding REST service. This made it easy for me to convert street addresses to latitude and longitude pairs (even though this wasn't required as we'll soon see). The real selling point of Yahoo! was the GeoRSS functionality. I can extend an RSS feed (which symfony generates quite easily) to add latitude or longitude points (or even the street address), direct my Yahoo! map to the feed and voila, all the locations in that feed are now on the map, and when I click on them, the RSS item is displayed. That cut down on a lot of development time.

He gives an example of a GeoRSS file, including a little bit on changing a normal RSS feed into a GeoRSS one. He then creates a model in symfony to contain the GeoRSS data and a few helpful classes to make parsing out the GeoRSS data quick and easy. He also briefly mentions the creation of a GeoRSS feed with symfony, basically changing an option on creation and using a different (provided) class to format things correctly.

In this post from forumtools.blogspot.com, there's information on how to integrate the Google Maps functionality into your pre-existing phpBB forums.

The integration relies on this set of scripts, a mapping application that lets users of the forums note their favorite locations in a simple interface.

The Geoforum package uses phpBB as a base, integrating simply into its structure. Users can even start discussions/topics surrounding a specific location. There are all sorts of features in the package, so if it sounds like something you've been looking for, be sure to check it out.

In this post from forumtools.blogspot.com, there's information on how to integrate the Google Maps functionality into your pre-existing phpBB forums.

The integration relies on this set of scripts, a mapping application that lets users of the forums note their favorite locations in a simple interface.

The Geoforum package uses phpBB as a base, integrating simply into its structure. Users can even start discussions/topics surrounding a specific location. There are all sorts of features in the package, so if it sounds like something you've been looking for, be sure to check it out.